


Same Old Story, Same Old Song and Dance

by NeoVenus22



Category: Farscape RPF, Stargate SG-1 RPF
Genre: F/M, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-11
Updated: 2010-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"That's two," he says.  "Think it's us?"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Old Story, Same Old Song and Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: No one mentioned belongs to me. The characters are in fact real people, who I am portraying in a fictitious manner.

Claud's cleaning out her trailer, shoving her collection of knick-knacks and baby photos into a box. Ben hoists himself over the threshold, shuts the door behind him, and watches her work in rare silence. She knows he's there, but it's a long moment before she actually acknowledges his presence. Her eyes are filled with tears, she'd always had that thing for holding tears in as long as humanly possible. It looks great on screen, heartbreakingly beautiful, and in real life it punches him in the gut ten times worse. A thousand times worse.

He cracks the grin of a grade-A doofus. This is how they'll play it, being alternately melancholy and silly, but never both together. Balance. Right now it's his turn to be comedy and hers to be tragedy. "That's two," he says, holding up two fingers for added emphasis. "Think it's us?"

"Maybe it's just you." Her voice is low, gravelly, traces of Aeryn, just enough to keep him with his back to the door.

"Hey now, they got renewed for a tenth season before you decided to butt in." It's always 'they,' never 'us, we.' Fun show, great people, family vibe, and everyone was always crazy nice to him, but it's not his show and never will be. Maybe you only ever have one true love.

"I couldn't stay away from you forever," she says, and laughs, and like that, a switch is flipped and it's his turn to be miserable. He finally goes over to the couch and sinks down. The couch tries valiantly to swallow him up, but doesn't succeed. It's a metaphor.

"So what now?" he asks. "Suppose I'll have to start playing doctors and lawyers now?"

"I'll be the doctor." Claudia jabs his chest with her finger and he rocks back. "You can be my nurse."

"Of course." Ben doesn't even question it, the idea that they'll work together again. It seems like an inevitability. Their two paths were meant to cross, to merge into one, wind off and disappear into the horizon. "Blue scrubs, a few good one-liners, cute love interest…"

"You'd have to learn all sorts of technobabble," she points out. "Big, ugly medical words. And no guns. You'd hate it."

"A nurse who goes rogue," he suggests. He closes his eyes, babbling sleepily and stupidly. When he opens them again, he's going to have to face reality all over again and he's still getting over the first time. "Rebels against the institution for making him learn all that junk."

The hand against the back of his head feels like it was always meant to be there, scraping through the hair down to the nape of his neck and back up. "And where exactly do I fall in this?" she asks. Her voice is so soothing, even if her tone isn't, even if she isn't trying to be. Claud is his anchor.

"Don't worry, you can have a shiny gun, too. Be an FBI agent or something."

"Sounds interesting." Long fingers toy familiarly with the neck of his shirt, in a way that's almost bored, as simple and reflexive as their conversation. He thinks he'll be heading back to L.A., maybe she'll audition for a guest spot somewhere before she flies back to Oz. He grabs her free hand, kisses the back of it, hates the universe a little.

It was easier to justify this, maybe, once upon a time when he was the only one with a wife and kids. Now there's a Mr. Claudia Black and a Claudia Black, Jr., out there, and God, they can't do this anymore, can't keep doing this. Dancing closer and closer, two volatile forces inching forever towards the inevitable big bang.

There's a rap on the trailer door and Claud invites whoever it is in. She doesn't get up, but her hand falls to her lap. The moment is broken, jagged, and no matter how neat the break, they'll never recreate it exactly.

Amanda sticks her head through the inches the door is ajar, radiating an uncertain caution that goes against her nature. Her eyes are a little red-rimmed, but other than that, she seems to be holding up all right. Maybe she's let it all out already, but that doesn't seem like her. "Hi guys," she says tiredly. "I'm heading home. Just wanted to say goodbye."

"Hey, get in here," he says, and he and Claud both jump to their feet and everyone's hugging like this is a last hurrah and like they're not going to see each other within a month for the movies anyway.

"Got any advice for first-timers?" Amanda asks with a minute sniffle.

Ben looks to Claud and sees the last eight years of his life in startling Technicolor. All of the whispers and yells, the tears and insatiable laughter, the running, the screaming, the gun-toting, the alien-killing, the ship-flying, the leather-wearing, the world-traveling, the sheer demented nature of his job that he wouldn't trade for anything.

"Not really," he says, and he knows it's all there in his voice, and damn if Claud's smile isn't the saddest thing he's ever seen.

"It must really suck for you guys," says Amanda. It should be an insensitive sort of comment, would be, except her voice catches a little like she's just figured it all out and is hopelessly sorry.

"Same old story, same old song and dance," Ben says to no one in particular, and Amanda and Claud hug again. This can't go on much longer, he thinks, because it was hard enough the first time, and even though it's only been half as long, he likes these people. Breaking up is hard to do.

"I should go," Amanda murmurs. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt."

Ben doesn't say it's fine. It's the polite thing to say, not that Amanda is necessarily expecting anyone to say anything at all. But saying it's fine is an admittance that her arrival was a good thing, that being interrupted is good. Rationally, the part of him that isn't John Crichton-crazy knows it's good. But the rest of him burns and bubbles over with curiosity, wondering what they might be missing. Eventually the questions he can't ask will eat him alive.

_Too late_, he thinks to himself, hugging Amanda and Claud together for some semblance of reassurance that he doesn't feel. Life is interrupted again. And again. And again. So much so that he wonders if this is what it's supposed to be like, a cycle of hellos and goodbyes and never enough in between. It should logically make this mean less, but it only makes it mean more. Ben sighs and puts his nose in Claud's hair, breathes deep, fortitude for the years to come. Hoping it's enough, knowing it'll never be, and moving forward anyway.


End file.
